Newcomers toCorpse Partywill find the series as a grisly take on school horror. In the series, four students become involved in a turmoil that plunges the Heavenly Host Elementary School into the realm of the supernatural. Beginning with the originalCorpse Partygame, players find themselves helping students escape the school’s terrible curse and uncover the mystery surrounding the mysterious Sachiko.
RELATED:Best Anime From The 2010s
As the series expanded into new games and even an anime adaptation, fans will soon learn more about the overall story previously known in prior installments. However, there are certain aspects of the game series that will always end up more frightening than any adaptation.
10The Anime Risked The Adaptation Syndrome
As any otaku would know, media with extended stories such as RPGs, light novels, and visual novels always face the risk of shortened narrativeswhen adapted into moviesor anime. Unfortunately,Corpse Partyand its major set of 20-hour-plus games meant that the anime suffered the same restrictions.
While the anime manages to capture the game’s overall themes, the adaptations failed to capture the sheer fright inCorpse Partygames. Granted, the anime managed to resolve major plot points as shown in the games. However, the journey wasn’t quite as satisfying an experience.
9The Games Featured Gore That Mattered
It’s natural for players to expect quite the gory experience from a horror game namedCorpse Party.However, with a backstory involving students and a school named Heavenly Host, the gore just quadrupled the horror. Anime viewers might feel the adaptation overdid the gore a bit. Unfortunately, too much blood and gore in a horror film may desensitize viewers to the overall experience.
In contrast, the game showcased its gore perfectly in the most unsettling ways. The game already featured its fair share of blood, bodies, and dilapidated environments. Juxtaposed with its anime visuals and chibi or sprite-based gameplay, it’s always shocking — and properly frightening — whenever the game surprises players with gory moments.
8The Games Scared Through Graphics
Akin to otherambiance-heavy horror titles such as Silent Hill,Corpse Partyheavily relied on both gameplay and environments to frighten audiences. Unlike the anime, which struggled to scare through its sped-up scripts, the gameplay ofCorpse Partyitself meshed well with its environments to frighten players.
Even the firstCorpse Partytitle (Blood Covered) can excel in scaring players despite its premise. At its core, this title has a visual novel approach to narrative overlayed on 32-bit exploration. And despite the rather simple graphics, the unsettling music over the backdrop of a haunted school can leave players scared even in broad daylight.
7The Games Frighten With Simple Mechanics
Contrary to other survival-horror titles,Corpse Partyis largely a horror adventure title. In addition to scaring with the background, the heavy emphasis on exploration did a great deal to help solidify eachCorpse Partygame’s horror potential.Blood Coveredalready frightens players with its dilapidated school with blood and dead students in 32-bit graphics.
RELATED:Iconic Shonen Anime Protagonists, Ranked By Their Power
However, what’s frightening is that players need to carefully check each body and each interactive object for clues where to go next. With this core mechanic, players have to power through the anxiety of having another grueling discovery before getting through the game’s main story.
6The Games Expand Goals, Hopes, Fears
In both the anime and the games,Corpse Partyremains a story about friendship. The irony of the game’s prologue itself, that of students being trapped in their school after a ritual of “always being together,” is emphasized throughout each game’s story. However, this is highly unlike the anime, which follows a straightforward approach to each character’s “main” fate.
In the games,both main charactersand side characters offer dialogue realistic enough for their age and situation. As such, players get an equal share of students being frightened and having natural reactions to their current state. These emotions, especially as they are on the verge of death, help stress the sheer horror and helplessness of their situation. These dialogues and actions add to character development that the anime couldn’t match.
5The Games Have Relaxed Pacing
It’s natural for theCorpse Partyadaptation to get straight to the point with the game’s story. Unfortunately, while it did tell theCorpse Partystory in a straightforward manner, its pacing didn’t help “sell” the story.
What the anime fails to realize is that pacing remains a core component for fans to fully appreciate the overarching narrative. Thanks to players taking the time to explore the game and interacting with both main and side characters, the emotional attachment makes shocking scenes all the more gruesome and unexpected.
4The Games Fulfill The Haunted School Trope
As a horror game set in Japan, it’s natural for fans to expect the game to have horror tropes unique to Japan. While the long-haired spirit has been a staple in Japanese horror, the “haunted school” trope remains multicultural. As such,Corpse Partyin itself is unsettling from the get-go due to its premise: being trapped in a haunted school.
RELATED:Greatest Idol Anime Of All Time
Unlike the anime that simply “retells” the story of the games, theCorpse Partytitles put players into the haunted school themselves. Since it’s an exploration title, players only have their own perception of a haunted school as their context as they learn more about the game’s events. The game relies on the player’s own perception to scare them, which the anime cannot do.
3The Games Involve The Player
As with other visual novels,Corpse Partyis a largely interactive experience. Contrary to its anime and manga counterparts,Corpse Partygames involve the player in the main story. Each game has its own set of playable characters; however, it’s always up to the players to decide what moves they’ll make and how to tackle the game’s problems at large.
True to an exploration-heavy experience,Corpse Partyemphasizes its horror through discovery while touring one’s surroundings. And despite being repeatedly set in schools, eachCorpse Partygame always unsettled players in new ways through this interactive approach.
2The Games Hold Players Accountable
Since they involve the player, the games excel in that they hold players responsible for the fates ofCorpse Partycharacters. True to its visual novel narrative, players have access to one True Ending and an overwhelming number of Bad Endings to each game. Additionally, some hard-coded and subtle choices can determine which characters die at any point in the story. Players can feel solely responsible for the endings they cause.
What’s more interesting is the fact that these choices can also affect the story’s final ending. As a result, aCorpse Partygame’s final survivors may or may not be canonical, with players having to do a replay to find out. This is highly unlike the anime, where characters act based on predetermined scripts.
1The Games Expand On Endings
Unlike the more straightforward anime adaptation, theCorpse Partygames offer a myriad of narrative expansions for players. Aside from its core True Ending, the Bad Endings also offer new perspectives to characters before spiraling towards their cruel fates.
Moreover, some Bad Endings become the main scope of certainCorpse Partyentries. In particular, theBook of Shadowssequel explores one of the original game’s Bad Endings. And the third game,Blood Drive, continues from Book of Shadows. The extensive narrative surrounding Sachiko’s story and the mystery behind the Heavenly Host School remains the most compelling drive of the series.
